(this article is re-post from previous article that writen by dholbach in this article)

Last week we hit Feature Freeze. This is the big date that all developer dread the most. Now features and new upstream versions have to have landed, everything else will be a matter the release team has to decide upon. We are rushing towards release with UI Freeze and Beta Freeze coming up next week. Exciting times!

For this report I got an update from the Ubuntu Server team, written by Dave Walker.

What’s cooking in Ubuntu server land?

The Ubuntu Server Team has already had quite a busy cycle. Last cycle, openstack components were initially introduced. This cycle has seen them receive much more attention, and packaging of extra components that didn’t exist last cycle.

In addition, using Ubuntu Server to orchestrate deployments is something that has evolved this cycle. One of the most interesting parts is the use of cobbler for deployment.

Ensemble, which is now part of the server team has entered the archive this cycle. Originally, ensemble worked purely against the ec2 API to assist with cloud deployments. This cycle, support for provisioning bare-metal hardware using cobblers API has been achieved.

There are always areas where interested people can contribute to the server flavour. The development tasks that people can take on varies from bitesize trivial tasks, to larger undertaking depending on available time commitment and experience. The type of desired task also tends to vary depending on the stage of the development cycle.

The Ubuntu server team tracks these bugs for release. Please note, that anything unassigned or assigned to ‘Ubuntu Server Team’ is generally up for grabs.

Another crucial part of being part of the Ubuntu Server Team, is triaging incoming bugs. We generally follow this process. We also welcome testing of the development cd image, and server archive components. This is vital to help catch critical issues before release.

Ensemble is always interested in having formula contributions, which is another interesting way that people with experience in deploying workloads are welcomed to contribute.

Thanks a lot Dave for the update! I’d like to add that if you’re interested in the Cloud and what’s happening there, make sure you visit http://cloud.ubuntu.com/! Also if you got excited about Ensemble and what it can do for you, have a look at existing formulas and requested formulas. Just join #ubuntu-ensemble if you need some help or want to meet the people behind this fantastic project.

We have one of the coolest events of the whole cycle coming up: Ubuntu Global Jam. Local Community teams around the world come together to have a good time on work on Ubuntu directly: translations, bugs, packaging, documentation, testing, documentation – everything goes! Check out the list of participating events to find out where to go, or set up an event yourself! There’s still some time until 2nd-4th September!

If you want to get involved in packaging and bug fixing, there’s still a lot of bugs that need to get fixed: